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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949778">a single, lost gasp.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MythologyPastry/pseuds/MythologyPastry'>MythologyPastry</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Kahn and Dax: A Study [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arguing, Body Horror, Episode: s06e26 Tears of the Prophets, Family Issues, Good Intentions, Grief/Mourning, Medical Trauma, Mild Gore, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, Symbiotic Relationship, Taboo, Trill Culture (Star Trek), Trills</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 23:47:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,660</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949778</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MythologyPastry/pseuds/MythologyPastry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Two freak accidents in Bajoran space drastically change the course of the Dax symbiont forever.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Kahn and Dax: A Study [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019907</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this instead of exams. You're welcome.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Are you alright?" It's a doctor, Julian, and he sounds beyond scared. She goes to open her eyes, but the lights of medbay blind. Her head pounds like Klingon drums, Curzon happily romancing some general's wife after too much bloodwine.</p><p>Nothing feels right... and her memories are scattered, like they were after Verad. She can't tell if the memory or her current state is what causes her stomach to seize.</p><p>"Dax?" Julian, again.</p><p>"Yeah?" The sound of her voice is jarring. Incorrect. She ignores the lights, eyes widening.</p><p>Why does it feel like she has a new body? Like Curzon has just died, and she's still such a wayward and anxious Jadzia? Like Curzon has just been saddled with the strange feeling of loss and regret and the feeling of too hot steel at his fingertips?</p><p>Why does it feel like she's wrong? Her body rippling under her thoughts, misshaped muscles responding in turn.</p><p>Julian stands before her, head hung, face carefully blank. There's another, a young Trill woman, who looks at her, eyes soft. It's pity, she realizes with a growing sense of dread.</p><p>"What do you remember?" The Trill -a counselor most likely- asks the question carefully. Julian sits, still refusing to look at Dax. The two are meant to be a perfect pair. One to fix her body. One to fix her mind.</p><p>"I was on a transport from Trill, of course, I-"</p><p>No.</p><p>No, she wasn't coming from Trill. She was in the temple. She was there on DS9. She and Worf were trying for a baby, and he was going to be a father again, and Jadzia -not Dax- would be a mother for the first time. She was there, in the temple, with Dukat.</p><p>She was so scared.</p><p>But she was on that transport, too. She was coming from Trill and doing her best to help fight the Dominion fleet, by utilizing the wormhole. She was making breakthroughs other scientists could only dream of. She was happy; she was heartbroken.</p><p>But most importantly, she was determined to do her part.</p><p>Dax raises a hand to her face. She can remember holding this face; she remembers looking at this face in the mirror. This face haunted her dreams, and it had served her well for so many years.</p><p>But now, it does little more than cause her gut, right where someone else should be, to shudder uncontrollably. A stranger. An intruder. She feels tempted to rip it out herself, to feel her blood pulse around her guts, to take out what doesn't belong. Only years of joining-related therapy keeps her from doing so.</p><p>So she looks at Bashir and asks brokenly, "What did you do?" The rage, the disgust, the fear, it rules her. Her face twists into an expression that must certainly be wicked; the other Trill flinches at the sight. "What did you do to me?"</p><p>"What else was I supposed to do, Dax?" But the response is quiet. Even he does not believe himself. She could kill him, but first, the voices in her head grow louder, and she doesn't want to hear it anymore. She curls into herself despite the pain and wails, shaking and tearing at her stomach with abandon.</p><p>She wants to strangle it, force the neurons to stop. To rip apart their axons like frayed thread and choke Bashir with it, condemn him to the human hell Benjamin had mentioned to Dax. To watch as the symbiont chokes on too rich air as she tears it from her abdomen. This thing, it doesn't belong in her, she has to make it right. She's the only one who can.</p><p>She screams as stitches rip and a strange smell so very not chemical fills her nose. There's shouting, and the feeling of blood on her hands, and a firm press to her neck. Then, for a blissful period of time, there is nothing.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"You shouldn't have done it," Ezri says. "I would have done it. I told you that I would take the symbiont. I told you that."</p><p>"And let Lenara die without Kahn? No, no, I couldn't have done that." Julian paces, looking at the endless datapads he's collected with everything he can find about Trill joining procedure history. "Dax would have never forgiven me. You, with the Dax symbiont, would have never forgiven me."</p><p>"I think I, as Dax, would have been able to recognize you were in an impossible situation," Ezri's voice grows steely, but she shakes her head and tries again when he looks at her with such sorrow. "Maybe that's true. Maybe it's not. We won't know now, will we?"</p><p>He breathes, focusing on counting the amount of small dents he can see in the floor tiles. Thirty-four so far. "I have a duty," he says shakily, turning his back on the young Trill out of shame. "I have a duty to save my patients."</p><p>Ezri Tigan places a soft hand on his back and lets it linger. "She'll be okay at the Commission," she says firmly. "Even the Trill on New Sydney know that the Commission can handle anything with the symbionts."</p><p>Bashir laughs without joy, trembling like a child. He's Jules again, having a breakdown after too many bright lights at the fair. "I thought the Trill on New Sydney denounce the Commission."</p><p>"We do. But we do it for other reasons."</p><p>"Has this, has what I did, happened before?" He leans away from her touch, but Ezri chases. She's trying to ground him, he realizes, make him feel supported. Tears prick at his eyes. He can't help but think of Jadzia instead. Ezri is little comfort.</p><p>Ezri makes a strange sound, one of reluctance. "I know it has," she finally admits. "It's a classic case study on joined Trill mental disturbances." Julian winces at the term. "Sorry, it just is."</p><p>"But I can't find it."</p><p>"Purposefully." She pulls from him, and he notes the distinct sound of a datapad being placed lightly on a desk. "The Commission doesn't like to talk about it. Some of these things are only discoverable if you're willing to parse through untranslated Old Trill, the Commission's format of choice."</p><p>"Are you telling me you're an expert on Old Trill? I don't believe that for a minute," he snaps. "You're not even from Trill, not really."</p><p>"No. I'm not." She huffs. "But my brother studied it. He likes that sort of thing."</p><p>Julian redirects. "If it was in Standard, we'd all know."</p><p>"Yes. And the Commission would consider it a failing." Ezri snorts. "To them, it's something very few Trill would understand. We talk about it, sure, and I've even read some books that featured something like this as a plot point."</p><p>He rubs at his eyes, such traitors. He refuses to cry in front of a stranger. Not like this, so he says the first legible thought to come to mind. "I guess to most Trill it would be a morbid curiosity." She doesn't respond, so he presses on. "It's like an old wives tale, a fable. There was once a Greek, a human, who wrote these stories. Some of them served as warnings. My favorite was the lamb and the wolf." He lets himself trail off. This isn't Garak he's speaking to; this is a fellow starfleet officer. "My point is, it's like a fairytale, isn't it?"</p><p>"No," she says tightly. "It's a horror story."</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Julian Bashir's skin goes cold, and he could almost swear that his heart misses a beat. "And I did that to them," he finally whispers after Ezri calls his name. "I did that to them."</p><p>Ezri doesn't say anything for quite some time, but eventually she just states, "Yes."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A few weeks after Lenara Dax reached Trill, Julian sits in a meeting room, sweat practically drooling off his body and ruining his clothes. The people interrogating him range from Starfleet Medical to Trill politicians, and he can't help but feel that he's alone. There's no one there with his best interests at heart, not really. His status as an augment means there's an open target on his back, and practically every Trill in the room is looking at him with open loathing.</p><p>The Captain didn't come.</p><p>One joined Trill specifically, Dr. Shalud Bes, cannot keep his voice down as he questions the intent of Bashir's actions. His nostrils flare as he asks, "Did you, as humans put it, want to play God?"</p><p>Julian's jaw clenches. "No, of course not." He looks towards the head of Starfleet Medical as he makes his case. "From my understanding, as an outsider to Trill culture, I could either save both patients or neither."</p><p>"But there is an unjoined on record who stated she would accept the Dax symbiont," A Tellarite woman, one he's not really acquainted with, jumps in. "Surely, that means you had other reasons to attach the Dax symbiont to Lenara Otner."</p><p>"Dr. Kahn," someone hisses.</p><p>The Tellarite waves her hand, teeth exposed in an odd grin. "Explain to us why Lenara Kahn made a better candidate than the unjoined Trill."</p><p>Everyone looks at him expectantly.</p><p>Julian takes a sip of his water. "Ensign Tigan was not prepared to be joined. Because of her lack of training and the," his voice cracks, "manner of injuries sustained by Dax, I assumed she would be a bad fit for the symbiont. But Lenara had been prepared to receive a symbiont in order to receive Kahn. I believed my decision made sense. Jadzia was shutting down, but Dax was still alive. The Kahn symbiont was already half dead." He rubs at his jaw, which hasn't stopped hurting in days. "If I gave Dax to Ensign Tigan, then Lenara was assuredly going to die without Kahn. So I put Dax in her."</p><p>Softly, he says, "Two birds, one stone."</p><p>A Trill minister's face softens. "Did you know that was taboo on Trill? Did you know of the potential side effects?"</p><p>"No. I did not."</p><p>"Even with all your reading and the discussions you shared with Lt. Commander Dax on Deep Space 9?" Bes laughs. "I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe an augment could provide care, and even give prior surgery, to a Trill and not come across anything that would have told you that your actions would be unethical."</p><p>"We are not here to discuss my status as an augment," Julian says firmly, thoughts seething in a break of the usual self-loathing he has become rapidly accustomed to as of late. "I swear to this board that I thought this would be like any other joining; the only trauma I expected was from the violent cause of which it came."</p><p>The minister nods while Bes scowls. They move onto the next line of questioning.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sisko cannot stand being back on Trill, having this conversation with Doctor Renhol once more.. This isn't the first time he's watched a Dax host die, but he wants it so desperately to be the last. He won't allow this.</p><p>"I've had this conversation with you once before, and I remember quite distinctly it coming around in my favor," he says.</p><p>Renhol is the epitome of steely, voice even and body firm. "My career, the Commission, will be ruined either way. At least this way we won't have a walking reminder of our mistake. Joran has been dead a long time, Captain."</p><p>Sisko humphs. "So you would kill a distinguished scientist? Someone necessary for the war effort? An innocent woman? Just so you can continue on with another bright-eyed Dax? Will you give that one a memory block too?"</p><p>"We have no idea what Lenara will be like outside of that coma." Renhol fixes him with a sharp look. "And I am not afraid of what you might say. It's easier for us to explain whatever you might say about Joran when we discuss your status as a prophet on Bajor. Ancestor worship or not, we on Trill do not believe in psychics."</p><p>"So you've been reading on me, well, I've been reading too." Sisko slides his datapad across her desk. "The last Trill to be cross-joined survived and passed on his symbiont to a willing host, a family member even."</p><p>"That was several hundred years ago, and he still required constant care."</p><p>"Did he?" Sisko laughs. "If I understand correctly, most of his emotional outbursts happened after situations of derision. Anyone would break down if their people could hate with such passion." His eyes flash with a distant memory, not his own. "Trust me, I know."</p><p>"A joined Trill must rise higher than-"</p><p>"And after a few months of therapy, he never tried to hurt the Falt symbiont ever again."</p><p>There is a blanket of silence that covers the two of them like a secret tryst. Something that could harm all of Trill if revealed. Anger. Frustration. The fear that comes with taboo. The rage that comes with being deceived.</p><p>Renhol's eyes drop before Sisko's. His grin grows brighter. She's lost their game of chicken.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Lenara?" Bejal stands in the doorway, a nurse hovering by his side. His sister sits at a desk, datapad in hand. She looks up at him blankly before letting a hesitant smile show. It disgruntles him; even when she first joined with Kahn, his sister had been so eager to see him.</p><p>"Hi," she says softly. "Why don't you come sit?" She gestures to the bed, and he sits close, leaning in to look at her. The nurse leaves, and the door closes with him.</p><p>"I'm so sorry I couldn't come be with you sooner. The Commission doctors said you needed time."</p><p>Lenara's face drops. Bejal thinks he wouldn't have noticed if she wasn't his sister, it's so subtle. Even the influence of Dax cannot blind him from such a dominant trait. "It's alright. I suppose that I would have been terrible company, before." Something flashes in her eyes, something dark that unnerves him. "Yes," she says after some thought. "Cross-joinings always take some extra time. It's par for the course. I needed time to heal after the surgery, and it would have been difficult with any family involved."</p><p>He nods, clearly a bit uncomfortable with such open, flagrant recognition of what happened to her. Bejal marches on and says, "I'm glad that doctor was removed. Any medical professional who would do that to a person doesn't deserve their position. I mean, I love you. You're my sister, but he-"</p><p>"But what he did was unnatural," she supplies, but it sounds harsh, mocking. "So DS9 deserved to lose a talented physician."</p><p>Bejal blinks. "Don't act like that Bashir didn't hurt you." His voice drops to a whisper when he says, "I know what seeing her did to you, and to be joined with Dax, it's-"</p><p>"Careful what you say now. That her is me." Lenara's shoulders tighten, and she frowns. A storm is building on her countenance, and Bejal flinches as she lifts herself from her chair to stare down at him in judgement. "What happened happened, and I have a lot of feelings about it." She looks off at seemingly nothing, but her mouth remains tight. "But I am what I am now, and I will not have you suggest that social norms dictate I should be dead. And I will most certainly not have you insult a man who used to be a dear friend to me."</p><p>The two of them do not say anything for a while, Bejal's mouth imitating a fish. Lenara sighs and tries to return to her datapad. At no sign of a reaction from her brother besides the discomforting quiet that blankets them, she says, "If you're not going to talk to me, get out."</p><p>And he does. For the first time in Lenara Dax's life, she has said something outrageous enough to shut Bejal up.</p><p>She smiles as she looks down at her datapad. He deserved it.</p>
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